Her disgust almost twisted the prettiness off her face. “Not any dead Aztec corpses I haven’t. Get that thing out of here!”
“Doctor,” Cutter said, stepping forward, “what are you going to do with this... this whatever-it-is.”
“Dad,” Richie said, still at his father’s side, tugging at his father’s sleeve. “Why is he sitting? Mummies are always standing on TV. When they aren’t walking around slow and stuff.”
“I’m no expert, Richie,” Ryan said, “but I think Aztec mummies aren’t like the Egyptian ones you see on TV and in the movies. Typically they were put in a sitting position, particularly if they were buried with a king or a prince, who they were guarding. It was out of respect.”
“Can I keep him?”
“Oh my God,” his mother said.
Rolling his eyes, Cutter said, “Roy, this thing being shipped, much less in your possession, is almost certainly illegal.”
Ryan shrugged. “File your complaints with my brother-in-law. I’ll give you contact info. He’s still in Mexico. Of course he may be in some remote location. In any case, you could check with the authorities there.”
Cutter managed a smile. “Come on now, Roy — don’t be ridiculous...”
The doctor gestured at the open crate and its grisly contents. “Hey — I didn’t ask for this thing. And that crate wasn’t addressed to me, either. It’s an unsolicited gift to my son. Of course, if you want an autopsy, I can perform it for you. No charge.”
Sighing, Cutter raised his palms. “Ease off, Doc. It’s just... you have some oddball relatives, it would seem.”
Ryan’s eyebrows went up. “That’s just the husband. You should meet my sister.”
That, anyway, got a nod out of Helen.
“Well,” Cutter demanded of Ryan, “what do you think your goofy brother-in-law expected you to do with this thing? Make a conversation piece out of it? A clothes rack, maybe? Or let your boy add it to his collection in his room next to the harpoon handle?”
Seizing upon that last suggestion, the boy hugged his father’s arm. “Can I keep him, Dad?”
“Son — please. Your mom is right to object to this ‘gift’ even being in the house. It’s a dead person, after all.”
Richie frowned up at his dad. “Not new dead. You said he died a long time ago, and Uncle Pete called him a mummy. Like on Scooby-Doo!”
Ryan lowered himself to a knee and looked right at his boy. “Son, this isn’t a cartoon. It’s very real. And this really is a dead person, however long ago he may have died.”
Richie’s brow tensed. “You mean maybe he isn’t dead?”
“No, I mean... we can’t be sure how very long ago it was that he died. Your uncle may know, and when he visits we can ask him. For now we should—”
“Get it,” Helen said, arms folded again, standing well away from their seated intruder in his crate, “out of here.”
Richie frowned at her, his chin crinkling in prelude to a cry. “Why don’t you like him, Mom? He’s friendly.”
Her eyes widened. “Friendly?”
“Sure he is. Look at him! He’s smiling!”
Ryan put an arm around his son’s shoulder. “Richie, that’s not a smile. It’s just something that time and temperature have distorted into what kind of looks like a smile.”
Cutter, realizing this was turning into a family matter better suited to a counselor than a cop, said, “Look, Roy — you need to decide what you’re going to do with that thing. There isn’t a museum in Atlanta that’s appropriate for it. Maybe in New York or D.C., but—”
“I don’t care what you do with it,” Helen said, “just get it the hell out of here.”
Richie started to say “Language” and his dad cautioned him not to with a gesture.
Then Ryan got to his feet and looked at Cutter. “Blake, this is an item of both historic and scientific interest. I’ll look into where it belongs, and who might want it... when things settle down around here. Acceptable?”
Cutter let air out and nodded. “Acceptable.”
Helen said, “Well, putting it in our son’s bedroom is not acceptable.”
“Perhaps,” Ryan said to Cutter, “your men could haul our friend here up into the attic till I can research where to put him more permanently.”
Cutter was already nodding. “Certainly. I’ll organize that.”
The boy was looking from the mummy to his mommy and his daddy and stopping there. “Can I play with him while he’s here?”
Ryan shook his head firmly. “No. You have your stethoscope to fool around with, and your comic books to read, and there’ll be homework delivered from school before long. You have plenty to do.”
“But no friends to play with. They’re all at school. And, anyway, I don’t have that many friends.”
“Maybe so. But at least the ones you do have are breathing.”
Ryan was showing the officers bearing the crate and its contents up the winding stairs as Cutter went over to gather his Stetson and windbreaker. Helen followed him.
“Do me a favor, Chief? Blake?”
“Certainly, if I can.”
“Look into what law my husband is breaking, allowing that... that corpse in the house.”
“All right.”
“And I may need your testimony.”
Cutter frowned. “To what effect?”
“To my husband’s negligence in allowing that thing to be kept under the same roof as our son.”
He just nodded perfunctorily and went out, thinking, And here I thought they were starting to get along...
Chapter 5
The work-out equipment in the attic was gleaming and new in the dreary bare-wood space with its slanted roof and open beams. There was a stationary bike, a treadmill, a rowing machine, and a barbell set with a weight bench. Also a jump rope, curled on the floor like a snake. Richie thought the jump rope was for girls till his dad told him that wasn’t so and showed him how to use it.
Richie’s dad was planning to make a real room out of the attic — a do-it-yourself project that hadn’t got done yet. For now, lots of boxes and trunks and stuff were piled at the far end, with the light of the single hanging bulb over where Richie did his exercises not reaching that far.
That end of the attic was spooky and Richie stayed away. His dad said the flooring back there wasn’t so good, and that was another reason to stay at the other end with the gym stuff. So was the chugging air conditioner in the window. Before Dad put that in, it wasn’t nice up here at all. Stuffy and musty and really, really hot.
But Dad had used soap and water and a bucket and got the cobwebs out and used a hammer and nails and lumber to replace some floorboards. He hammered some nails back, too, that were sticking out and nasty.
Richie felt comfortable up here, at the gym end anyway, and was happy that the two policemen were hauling his birthday present up. At first he followed them from downstairs, then at the top showed them the way. Otherwise the policemen wouldn’t have known where the door to the attic was. The door was in his room and that made it convenient for Richie with his mini-gym (as Dad called it) up there.
One of the policeman was tall and young and the other old and kind of pudgy. The old pudgy one made a lot of noise but the young one didn’t as they carried the wooden box. Richie went on ahead up the narrow steep stairs to the attic and behind him there was some swearing from the pudgy old policeman. The young skinny one was in front coming up, carrying the box behind him, and kind of smiled at Richie when the old pudgy one said bad words.